e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707911764536_3964521644576746" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - C<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707911764536_7019805779327943" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>onium
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Apiaceae - Apioideae - Conium L.

Description:

  • Biennial herbs, erect, fairly vigorous; stem maculate or immaculate, with taproot
  • Leaves pinnately decompound, resembling carrot leaves
  • Flowers in dense, compound umbels, with many bracts, rarely unisexual
  • Calyx with obsolete teeth
  • Petals obovate or cuneate, with apex shortly inflexed, keeled on inner face
  • Disc cushion-shaped, divided
  • Stamens longer than petals
  • Fruit broadly ovate or elliptic, slightly laterally flattened; mericarps smooth or with 5 primary, prominent veins, channelled on inner face; oil ducts many, small; carpophore undivided
  • Seeds subterete or flat on one face and slightly convex on the other, channelled on inner face
  • x = 11 (8 - 1 report)

Nomenclature:

  • Conium L.
    • Linnaeus: 243 (1753)
    • Sonder: 567 (1862)
    • Hilliard & Burtt: 465 (1985)
    • Burtt: 202 (1991)
    • Pimenov & Leonov: 38 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species 6, Europe, Africa, Asia
  • Southern Africa: Species 3 indigenous and widespread; one cosmopolitan weed: *Conium maculatum L., highly poisonous, has been recorded from the Western Cape

References:

  • BURTT, B.L. 1991. Umbelliferae of southern Africa: an introduction and annotated checklist. Edinburgh Journal of Botany 48
  • HILLIARD, O.M. & BURTT, B.L. 1985. Conium (Umbelliferae) in southern Africa. South African Journal of Botany 51
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm
  • PIMENOV, M.G. & LEONOV, M.V. 1993. The genera of the Umbelliferae. A nomenclator. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
  • SONDER, W. 1862. Umbelliferae. Flora capensis 2